Stanford students believe in First Amendment, at least in theory

STANFORD -- In a poll of Stanford University students, most respondents
said they believed in freedom of speech and of the press, but they split on
what those freedoms include.

Students living in the American Studies Theme House recently did 258
telephone interviews with a random sample of registered undergraduate and
graduate students. The accuracy of the poll is plus or minus 8 percent.

Ninety-five percent of respondents said that "minorities should have the
right to criticize the majority." Asked about specific examples, however, 76
percent felt the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
should have the right to buy an ad in the mass media critical of white
people, while 50 percent said that the Ku Klux Klan should have the same
right to an ad critical of minorities.

"As you move from general statements, you find less and less agreement,"
said Donald F. Roberts, professor, communication and resident fellow in the
American Studies Theme House. "When the principle is articulated in concrete
terms, they pay more attention to the content than the principle."

What it really comes down to, he said, is most people say " 'I'm for free
speech as long as you don't say anything that I disagree with or find
offensive.' It's a willingness to put in 'but.' "

Roberts said he was surprised to find that only 79 percent of respondents
believe in the First Amendment guarantee that Congress should make no law
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. When the questions got more
concrete, 33 percent said there are some things the government should keep
people from saying and 59 percent that there are some things it has the
right to stop the media from reporting.

Getting more specific, 43 percent of respondents agreed that the
government should have had the right to control news about the war in the
Persian Gulf, while 30 percent felt the government should have the right to
stop sexually explicit music videos from being broadcast on network
television.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said the government has no right to stop
a professor from lecturing that white people may be genetically superior; 85
percent said the government should not have the right to stop an
Iraqi-American from verbally attacking President Bush.

Testing their beliefs on their home turf:

61 percent of respondents said that Stanford has the right to punish an
undergraduate who posts a flier ridiculing people of color.

29 percent said the university should have the right to stop the Daily
from publishing nude photos on the front page.

19 percent said the university should have the right to prohibit a
professor from lecturing that multiculturalism is anti- intellectual.

Most of the Stanford students responding to the poll described themselves
as liberal, both politically (79 percent) and socially (80 percent).

Noting that this is the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, Roberts said
he thought First Amendment issues need to be talked about more.

"I want students to confront the fact that there is this incongruence and
stop and think about it for a minute," he said. "If you believe in the First
Amendment, you should believe in the principle of free speech regardless of
content. That means sometimes people will say things you don't want to hear.
There's always a cost to that, but it's a cost you have to pay."

-cb-

910507Arc1393.html

This is an archived release.

This release is not available in any other form.
Images mentioned in this release are not available online.
Stanford News Service has an extensive library of images,
some of which may be available to you online.
Direct your request by EMail to images@news-service.stanford.edu.